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No emergency surgeries at interior Regional Hospitals
Even with state-of-the-art theatres that cost millions of dollars to set up, the
Lethem Hospital is one of the Regional Hospitals without a resident General Surgeon.
Regional Hospitals in Bartica, Lethem and Mabaruma are unable to perform emergency surgeries. Therefore, patients have to be rushed to the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC), at an exorbitant cost to the Ministry of Health.
According to Dr. Narine Singh, Director of Regional Health Services, this situation exists because there are no resident General Surgeons stationed at those far flung facilities. However, he said that those hospitals are staffed with a physician, and theater and anesthesia nurses, who perform minor surgeries.
Dr. Singh related that whenever there are emergency cases, these health practitioners provide immediate care to patients before they are evacuated to coastland hospitals. He was unable to say if any patients ever succumbed while being evacuated.
The Bartica Regional Hospital has not been opened to emergency surgeries for over one year. As such, patients who were seriously injured with broken limbs, for example, were sent to Georgetown.
The Director stated that the hospitals’ theatres are utilized by the Roving Medical Surgical Teams that visit the facilities to perform scheduled major surgeries. These teams, comprising doctors from the public and private sectors, were created to meet the health needs of those areas, given the limited human resources available.
He stated that there are 14 full-time General Surgeons in Guyana. They operate at the major Regional Hospitals, including New Amsterdam, Mahaicony, Suddie and Linden and at the country’s main medical institution – the GPHC.
He emphasized that the General Surgeons were placed at hospitals in densely populated areas.
Dr. Singh noted that come next year Guyana would have additional General Surgeons but that may not be enough. He explained that although there are many junior doctors in the health system, Guyana needs more specialized doctors.
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